Your Senator or Representative’s name and address (SEE:

Month day, 2015

DearMember(s) of Congress:

Please don’t diminish what we know about U.S. employment and the labor force.

As final appropriation levels for Fiscal Year 2016 are considered, we strongly encourage you to support the restoration and preservation of the core and essential statistical programs of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). BLS is the nation’s principal fact-finding agency in the broad fields of labor, employment, consumer and producer price, and American productivity statistics. It is not able to sustain all of its programs at the level of funding it received in FY 2015 ($592 million).The House Committee on Appropriations approved a slight increase for BLS in 2016, at $609 million. The Senate Committee on Appropriations proposed $579 million, a level less than that in FY 2015. The consequences of reductions from FY 2015 appropriations are potentially dire. BLS would have to suspend or eliminate whole programs and/or statistical series.

BLS produces essential economic information for public and private decision making. It is vital to our nation’s business community, labor and workforce communities, and the research community that studies and evaluates labor and related economic policies and programs. If the U.S. hopes to compete in complex, increasingly data-driven global markets, it needs BLS survey data and economic indicators. Specifically, BLS provides data, programs, and products that serve our economy and workforce by:

  • measuring labor market activity that supplies the critical gauge of our nation's employment/unemployment status;
  • tracking consumer and producer price changes and developing price indicators, such as the principal inflation-measuring Consumer Price Index;
  • calculating the productivity of business endeavors in a manner that can be compared across sectors and countries;
  • monitoring working conditions; and
  • informing state and local labor markets

Statistics and indicators generated by BLS are irreplaceable components of the calculation of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the U.S. balance of trade, the U.S. national income and products account and officially designated discount rates. They are used, among others, by: local, county, and state governments in their job growth and development efforts: small and large businesses in decisions about their wages, employment, and occupational safety policies, in contract escalation, and in benchmarking with regard to prices they pay for goods; industries which, like the insurance sector, rely on accurate and objective projections; and by students and their guidance counselors in considering career paths.

The real (inflation adjusted) value of appropriations to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) fell between 2004 and 2008, and has been falling again since 2009 (See Figure 1). Its current purchasing power is less than it was in 2001. The agency has increasingly become unable to fulfill its basic responsibilities, despite its having made a series of cost-saving program changes since 2011, eliminating in 2013 its Mass Layoffs Statistics, Measuring Green Jobs, and International Labor Comparisons programs, and curtailing, in 2014, some collection under its Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. In 2015, it has had to rely on a one-time contribution from the Department of Commerce in order to continue its Export Price Program. We users of BLS statistics are especially fearful that the agency’s current cuts in hiring and investments in staff training and development could affect the quality of its statistical information. These cuts are not sustainable, not even over the short run.

Add a sentence or two about the nature of your use of/dependence on BLS statistics, if you wish.

Without adequate funding in FY 2016, the BLS will be obligated to eliminate surveysand/or data programs. There is no other option.

If the agency maintains all activities that produce principal economic indicators (used widely as the major statistical series describing current economic conditions) and all programs that are mandated by law or employed in the mandated programs of others, a number of major programs could still be subject to discontinuation. These include the National Longitudinal Surveys – among the few and rare surveys that track establishments or households over time --, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, American Time Use Survey, Employee Benefits Survey, and Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries.

Each of these BLS programs has a large, varied, and vocal army of government agencies, businesses, community interests and others who rely on its output. Indeed, there are legislated limits on the programs that could be subject to elimination. The potentially continued cost-squeeze suggests that we will no longer have timely, objective, high quality data on which to make important decisions.

Accordingly, we prevail upon you/members of Congress/members of the Conference Committee to restore lost funding for all core BLS programs and for renewed investment in its technical staff. A level ofat least $609 million would make progress toward this restoration.

Thank you for your understanding of the gravity of the BLS funding situation and our hope to see it resolved in FY 2016 - to the benefit of evidence-based employment and workforce policies, U.S. firms’ informed decision making, and our basic understanding of how U.S. prosperity is linked with wages, employment, consumer prices, and trade.

Sincerely,

Your name and address